My Cuts Don't Bleed
Chapter 2
**2 MONTHS LATER**
Eliza was out of tape. She had gone through an entire roll in a single night, how could she explain that to the trainer and convince him to give her more? She sighed and began unwinding the sticky strips from her knuckles.
A door slammed and she moved into position. She crouched low and surveyed her surroundings. The gym was empty; everyone was camping that weekend. This was the last Saturday before the commencement ceremony - it would be unacceptable for the initiates to spend the evening hanging out with friends and cherishing old memories. They were in the woods somewhere drinking until the booze dripped from their pores and hooking up with each other like it was their last night on earth.
“And they all call me a slut…” she grumbled to herself as she zipped her bag. Her hands were sore, she had been at the punching bag for at least 4 hours. Her fingers and knuckles were decorated by bruises and cuts. She examined them in the moonlight that poured in through the high window. She could remember what it was like to be covered in bruises and lacerations.
Before she came to Shield Eliza fought in the Underground in New York. Mixed Martial Arts was illegal and the police cracked down harder on people who volunteered to fight in the ring than they did on the bums who attacked innocent people on sidewalks. She ran away from her foster home and entered the ring for the first time when she was 16. She was infamous by age 20. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t have an education. She didn’t get to have a normal life like other New York teens. She was a stone cold fighter, and her plan was to fight until the day she died.
All MMA fighters get arrested eventually in the Bronx. Eliza was 23 when the cops came for her. They invaded the warehouse and scattered the crowd. Her opponent ran but Eliza stayed put; she was done fighting. The police put her in the back of a patrol car and she was certain they were going to lock her up in prison, but they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and transferred her onto a helicopter. She landed on the roof of Shield headquarters in Washington DC an hour later. The next morning she was on a train headed to the training facility in Pennsylvania.
Precamp was like a walk in the park to her. Shield’s training was nothing compared to what she put herself through on the streets. She got water breaks in Pennsylvania – she got to take a time out every 60 minutes to drink cold water and lay in the grass. She was only expected to train during the week, Saturdays and Sundays were for rest, but Eliza could never understand the concept of rest. How could her peers be so relaxed just because they weren’t in the middle of a drill? Eliza never rested. She constantly waited for someone to attack her.
She could feel someone in the gym with her. They were coming from the corner behind her near the showers. They were moving slowly and quietly – they were trying to sneak up on her. She couldn’t see who it was so she kept packing her things and pretended not to know they were coming, but she was ready for them to pounce.
She waited until the tension between her and the intruder was just right before spinning around and swinging a leg in the air. He barely dodged the force of her foot.
“Woah! At ease, soldier!” Steve Rogers took a step back and caught his breath.
“I’m sorry Captain, I was just here for a little bit, I’m going back to my room now,” Eliza knew she was in trouble. She got out of the camping trip because she tripped running up the stadium stairs and fractured her ankle that morning. Dr. Banner ordered her to stay in bed and keep that foot elevated for 3 days. The few friends she had felt sorry and offered to stay behind with her, but she insisted they go on without her. She needed to be alone and she was enjoying the solitude until Captain America had to ruin it.
“How’s that ankle?” he said with a cocked eyebrow. He saw the x-rays laying on Bruce’s desk and they were not pretty. Eliza should have been bedridden and drooling from the narcotics, but instead she had snuck into the gym and spent the night taking all her anger out on the punching bag.
“Oh, it’s still sore,” she lied without even hesitating. She was ashamed of herself. She had been lying to everyone in the facility since the day she got there and every night she had to remind herself what was true. “It’s not that bad, I just can’t put a lot of weight on it,” she said and limped away, “I’m tired, I’ll go back to bed now, sir.”
She felt like an idiot, but running from one of the Avengers before they poked too far into her life had become and everyday event. It was usually Steve, but sometimes it was Dr. Banner or Natasha. Never Tony or Vision, they hardly interacted with the Rats unless they were on an assignment from Nick Fury. Thor was in Asgard and didn’t have time to think about initiates. Wanda had never even set foot on the training facility.
Steve caught up to her in two strides and put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“You actually fractured your left ankle,” he whispered and Eliza’s face immediately turned red. Was she embarrassed because she was dumb enough to limp on the wrong foot or because Steve was so close to her?
“Eliza,” he spun her around and forced her to face him. He said her name slowly and sent a shiver down her spine. She tried to erase the blush from her face but it stayed put. She was humiliated. Every female in the universe had a crush on Steve Rogers, but she had to keep herself together better. This was her captain! He was her leader and her mentor, she couldn’t let her knees buckle every time he was in her presence.
The silence between them lasted an eternity to Eliza. She was in her final days of Rat training. Every initiate spent one to three years at Shield in Pennsylvania before becoming an agent and getting their first assignment. That thirty seconds of silence between her and Captain America seemed longer than all the nights she spent in that place.
But he didn’t seem like Captain America that night. She had never seen him in uniform in person. She didn’t know Captain America, she knew Steve Rogers, and as much as she tried to deny herself any feelings she had towards him, he was her friend and he was worried about her.
“I think there is something you’re not telling me,” his voice echoed through the empty gym. He stepped towards her and he was close enough for her to smell his cologne. With every breath she let herself go a little more until she was free of her shell… until she removed the invisible mask she wore 24/7 since the day she arrived at Shield. in DC five years ago.
“You’re right, Captain,” her voice was almost inaudible and she stared at her feet. This was it. This was the moment she would confess to the leader of the Avengers what she was. This was her last moment of freedom before he called the patrolmen to put her in shackles and lock her away. She tried to kill the sob moving up her throat but it shook with such force that she lost her balance.
Steve steadied her and cupped his fingers beneath her chin. He was gentle and delicate, nothing like the angry and violent Steve she imagined he would be every night when she had nightmares about this moment.
“I’m not your captain right now, I’m your friend,” he said. A tear escaped from her eye and landed on his thumb. She didn’t care about looking tough in front of him. She couldn’t care. After a year in the Rat training program she barely had the energy to finish her final week.
“Eliza…” he said her name even slower this time. She gulped. Whatever he was going to ask her, she had to answer truthfully. She couldn’t lie to him anymore.
“How did you manipulate Dr. Banner’s x-rays of your foot?”
She laughed. She didn’t just laugh, she howled. She hadn’t laughed so hard in years. It was the worst way she could have responded. Of course it wasn’t funny, but laughter like that always comes in the least humorous situations. Steve backed away from her in confusion.
“Manipulate the x-rays?” she wiped another tear from her eye, “I didn’t manipulate anything.”
“But I saw the pictures… and I saw you use crutches to get back to your room… and Bruce gave me the report, he diagnosed you with an ankle fracture…” Steve wasn’t even talking to her, he was thinking out loud trying to make sense of how she could possibly be moving around like that less than 24 hours after the injury.
“Miss Lilly,” it hurt to hear him call her that. Now he was wearing his Captain hat, “You will tell me how you manipulated those x-rays. That is an order.”
Eliza didn’t intend to piss him off or make him think she was laughing at him, she was just so shocked by what he thought she was doing that it caught her off guard. But she could see that the time for laughter was over.
“I didn’t manipulate anything,” she repeated, “my ankle was fractured.” She was going to say more but Steve cut her off.
“Stop lying!” his shouts echoed off the walls and made her stomach drop. She had been yelled at many times in her life, but never like this. When Steve yelled at her it was because he cared and because after the dozens of times he tried to learn the truth from her and failed, he was not letting her walk away this time until he knew exactly what she was doing.
“I healed,” she said after a quick sigh. He was not going to make this confession easy.
“You healed?”
Yes, I healed. What don’t you understand? She kept those words in her brain. It was such a simple concept to her that she never really considered how to explain it to anyone else. There were a lot of weird superpowers in the universe. Mind control, super serums, super speed, super strength… but the ability to heal yourself? That was a new one.
“I tripped on purpose to fracture my foot so I didn’t have to go camping. They took me to the medical wing and Dr. Banner diagnosed me. I used the crutches to go to my room and the medical initiates helped me ice and elevate my foot. When the last person got on the train I healed my foot and flushed the pain killers down the toilet. Then I came here.”
She didn’t realize how much pressure her lies weighed until she finally told Steve the truth. She could breathe for the first time in months.
“How?” was all he said. This was the part where he was supposed to call Brock to drag her away for lying during entrance interviews and examinations and for hiding her power, but much to Eliza’s relief he didn’t reach for his communicator. He kept his eyes locked on her.
“I don’t know how. I just do it,” she shrugged. He could use his lie detector on her if he didn’t believe her. She honestly did not know how she did it. She tried to figure it out since she realized she had a power when she started fighting in New York, years later and she still had no idea.
“Who knows about this?” he asked.
She could feel another sob forming in her throat. She could only handle confessing one secret at a time, did Steve really have to learn two in one night?
“Look at me Eliza,” he held her face between his hands, “I need you to be completely honest with me right now. You are the smartest initiate in your class; you were wise to keep your power a secret.”
Hearing confirmation that she had a power shook Eliza. She knew she had something special, she knew from history lessons that superpowers are dangerous and that she shouldn’t flaunt hers around, but to hear Captain America acknowledge that she had a power almost brought her to her knees in humility.
Steve didn’t have time to deal with an emotional and humbled superhuman. He gripped Eliza by the shoulders, “The commencement ceremony is a week away. You are one week away from the most important day of your life, do you understand?”
She stared at him blankly. No, she did not understand. Sure, commencement was important because she would graduate and learn her assignment, but she was confident she would travel with the other Rats in her class on mission to bring in all the other powered humans who refused to sign the Superhuman Registration Act. But Steve was implying something more important.
“Next Saturday is about more than getting your assignment,” he knew what she was thinking, “you are a Rat. You go before the Council next Saturday.” He stared into her eyes searching for some sign that she understood, but he was only freaking her out.
“Damn it Eliza! If they know you have a superpower the will make you register! Worse, they will imprison you for lying and not registering! You will be the first superhuman arrested, they’ll put you on the front page of every newspaper in the world to make an example of you!” Steve shook her until she could feel the fear he had for her in his fingerprints. Now she understood.
“Oh my god… oh my god what do I do?” she knew she would face heavy consequences when Shield found out she was hiding her ability, especially since her job within the agency was to arrest everyone else who refused to comply with the SRA. But she didn’t have a plan for what she would do when they did find out.
“We’re not supposed to tell you about the Council meeting,” he said. Her thoughts were easy to read, “They don’t want you to be prepared so that when they call you in they can figure out if you’re hiding something. But we can talk about that later.”
Eliza felt some relief. At least he wasn’t freaking out over the Council meeting like she was.
“Who knows?” he spoke gently. He hated to see her in a panic, but there was no other way to make her realize how much danger she was in.
“Xander,” she whispered.
Steve squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Xander wasn’t the worst person in the universe to trust with her secret, but he wasn’t the most ideal candidate, either.
“Anyone else?” he took her hands and she immediately felt better.
She shook her head. Other people may have had their suspicions, but they didn’t know what she was capable of. And as evidenced by Steve’s assumption that she could manipulate x-rays, their suspicions were way off base.
“You cannot let anyone find out,” Steve warned. “Do you trust Xander?”
More tears formed behind Eliza’s eyes and she let them all come out. This confession would hurt more than the first.
“What did he do to you Eliza?” Steve held her face and tenderly wiped away her tears. She leaned her cheek against his palm and struggled to find any words. Steve knew what Xander had done to Eliza, but he needed to hear her say it.
Eliza wanted to tell Steve. She knew that she had to tell him. If she was going to leave the training facility as a free woman after the commencement ceremony, she would have to trust Captain America with her life. But after months of lying to him, and after years of lying to everyone else, the truth refused to come out of her.
“Come with me,” Steve said and twisted his fingers through hers, “I’m gonna get you out of here for the night.” She picked up her gym bag and followed him to the exit.
She was still crying, but she wasn’t terrified anymore. She had never felt this many emotions at one time – fear, sadness, anger, and desperation for what would happen when she stood in front of the Council, but also hope and anticipation for whatever Steve had in mind for the night.
His motorcycle waited for them outside.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he winked. She climbed onto the seat behind him. “Hold on tight!” he said over sound of the revving engine. Her fingers scrambled for handles on the side, but there was nothing to grab onto. Steve reached behind him and took hold of her hands, then wrapped them around his torso. “You have to hold onto me,” he said. Eliza couldn’t see his expression in the dark, but she could sense his warm smile.
She held onto him tight as he brought the bike to life and started up the hill. She held onto him like her life depended on it. Her life did depend on him.
Eliza was out of tape. She had gone through an entire roll in a single night, how could she explain that to the trainer and convince him to give her more? She sighed and began unwinding the sticky strips from her knuckles.
A door slammed and she moved into position. She crouched low and surveyed her surroundings. The gym was empty; everyone was camping that weekend. This was the last Saturday before the commencement ceremony - it would be unacceptable for the initiates to spend the evening hanging out with friends and cherishing old memories. They were in the woods somewhere drinking until the booze dripped from their pores and hooking up with each other like it was their last night on earth.
“And they all call me a slut…” she grumbled to herself as she zipped her bag. Her hands were sore, she had been at the punching bag for at least 4 hours. Her fingers and knuckles were decorated by bruises and cuts. She examined them in the moonlight that poured in through the high window. She could remember what it was like to be covered in bruises and lacerations.
Before she came to Shield Eliza fought in the Underground in New York. Mixed Martial Arts was illegal and the police cracked down harder on people who volunteered to fight in the ring than they did on the bums who attacked innocent people on sidewalks. She ran away from her foster home and entered the ring for the first time when she was 16. She was infamous by age 20. She didn’t have friends. She didn’t have an education. She didn’t get to have a normal life like other New York teens. She was a stone cold fighter, and her plan was to fight until the day she died.
All MMA fighters get arrested eventually in the Bronx. Eliza was 23 when the cops came for her. They invaded the warehouse and scattered the crowd. Her opponent ran but Eliza stayed put; she was done fighting. The police put her in the back of a patrol car and she was certain they were going to lock her up in prison, but they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and transferred her onto a helicopter. She landed on the roof of Shield headquarters in Washington DC an hour later. The next morning she was on a train headed to the training facility in Pennsylvania.
Precamp was like a walk in the park to her. Shield’s training was nothing compared to what she put herself through on the streets. She got water breaks in Pennsylvania – she got to take a time out every 60 minutes to drink cold water and lay in the grass. She was only expected to train during the week, Saturdays and Sundays were for rest, but Eliza could never understand the concept of rest. How could her peers be so relaxed just because they weren’t in the middle of a drill? Eliza never rested. She constantly waited for someone to attack her.
She could feel someone in the gym with her. They were coming from the corner behind her near the showers. They were moving slowly and quietly – they were trying to sneak up on her. She couldn’t see who it was so she kept packing her things and pretended not to know they were coming, but she was ready for them to pounce.
She waited until the tension between her and the intruder was just right before spinning around and swinging a leg in the air. He barely dodged the force of her foot.
“Woah! At ease, soldier!” Steve Rogers took a step back and caught his breath.
“I’m sorry Captain, I was just here for a little bit, I’m going back to my room now,” Eliza knew she was in trouble. She got out of the camping trip because she tripped running up the stadium stairs and fractured her ankle that morning. Dr. Banner ordered her to stay in bed and keep that foot elevated for 3 days. The few friends she had felt sorry and offered to stay behind with her, but she insisted they go on without her. She needed to be alone and she was enjoying the solitude until Captain America had to ruin it.
“How’s that ankle?” he said with a cocked eyebrow. He saw the x-rays laying on Bruce’s desk and they were not pretty. Eliza should have been bedridden and drooling from the narcotics, but instead she had snuck into the gym and spent the night taking all her anger out on the punching bag.
“Oh, it’s still sore,” she lied without even hesitating. She was ashamed of herself. She had been lying to everyone in the facility since the day she got there and every night she had to remind herself what was true. “It’s not that bad, I just can’t put a lot of weight on it,” she said and limped away, “I’m tired, I’ll go back to bed now, sir.”
She felt like an idiot, but running from one of the Avengers before they poked too far into her life had become and everyday event. It was usually Steve, but sometimes it was Dr. Banner or Natasha. Never Tony or Vision, they hardly interacted with the Rats unless they were on an assignment from Nick Fury. Thor was in Asgard and didn’t have time to think about initiates. Wanda had never even set foot on the training facility.
Steve caught up to her in two strides and put a hand on her shoulder, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“You actually fractured your left ankle,” he whispered and Eliza’s face immediately turned red. Was she embarrassed because she was dumb enough to limp on the wrong foot or because Steve was so close to her?
“Eliza,” he spun her around and forced her to face him. He said her name slowly and sent a shiver down her spine. She tried to erase the blush from her face but it stayed put. She was humiliated. Every female in the universe had a crush on Steve Rogers, but she had to keep herself together better. This was her captain! He was her leader and her mentor, she couldn’t let her knees buckle every time he was in her presence.
The silence between them lasted an eternity to Eliza. She was in her final days of Rat training. Every initiate spent one to three years at Shield in Pennsylvania before becoming an agent and getting their first assignment. That thirty seconds of silence between her and Captain America seemed longer than all the nights she spent in that place.
But he didn’t seem like Captain America that night. She had never seen him in uniform in person. She didn’t know Captain America, she knew Steve Rogers, and as much as she tried to deny herself any feelings she had towards him, he was her friend and he was worried about her.
“I think there is something you’re not telling me,” his voice echoed through the empty gym. He stepped towards her and he was close enough for her to smell his cologne. With every breath she let herself go a little more until she was free of her shell… until she removed the invisible mask she wore 24/7 since the day she arrived at Shield. in DC five years ago.
“You’re right, Captain,” her voice was almost inaudible and she stared at her feet. This was it. This was the moment she would confess to the leader of the Avengers what she was. This was her last moment of freedom before he called the patrolmen to put her in shackles and lock her away. She tried to kill the sob moving up her throat but it shook with such force that she lost her balance.
Steve steadied her and cupped his fingers beneath her chin. He was gentle and delicate, nothing like the angry and violent Steve she imagined he would be every night when she had nightmares about this moment.
“I’m not your captain right now, I’m your friend,” he said. A tear escaped from her eye and landed on his thumb. She didn’t care about looking tough in front of him. She couldn’t care. After a year in the Rat training program she barely had the energy to finish her final week.
“Eliza…” he said her name even slower this time. She gulped. Whatever he was going to ask her, she had to answer truthfully. She couldn’t lie to him anymore.
“How did you manipulate Dr. Banner’s x-rays of your foot?”
She laughed. She didn’t just laugh, she howled. She hadn’t laughed so hard in years. It was the worst way she could have responded. Of course it wasn’t funny, but laughter like that always comes in the least humorous situations. Steve backed away from her in confusion.
“Manipulate the x-rays?” she wiped another tear from her eye, “I didn’t manipulate anything.”
“But I saw the pictures… and I saw you use crutches to get back to your room… and Bruce gave me the report, he diagnosed you with an ankle fracture…” Steve wasn’t even talking to her, he was thinking out loud trying to make sense of how she could possibly be moving around like that less than 24 hours after the injury.
“Miss Lilly,” it hurt to hear him call her that. Now he was wearing his Captain hat, “You will tell me how you manipulated those x-rays. That is an order.”
Eliza didn’t intend to piss him off or make him think she was laughing at him, she was just so shocked by what he thought she was doing that it caught her off guard. But she could see that the time for laughter was over.
“I didn’t manipulate anything,” she repeated, “my ankle was fractured.” She was going to say more but Steve cut her off.
“Stop lying!” his shouts echoed off the walls and made her stomach drop. She had been yelled at many times in her life, but never like this. When Steve yelled at her it was because he cared and because after the dozens of times he tried to learn the truth from her and failed, he was not letting her walk away this time until he knew exactly what she was doing.
“I healed,” she said after a quick sigh. He was not going to make this confession easy.
“You healed?”
Yes, I healed. What don’t you understand? She kept those words in her brain. It was such a simple concept to her that she never really considered how to explain it to anyone else. There were a lot of weird superpowers in the universe. Mind control, super serums, super speed, super strength… but the ability to heal yourself? That was a new one.
“I tripped on purpose to fracture my foot so I didn’t have to go camping. They took me to the medical wing and Dr. Banner diagnosed me. I used the crutches to go to my room and the medical initiates helped me ice and elevate my foot. When the last person got on the train I healed my foot and flushed the pain killers down the toilet. Then I came here.”
She didn’t realize how much pressure her lies weighed until she finally told Steve the truth. She could breathe for the first time in months.
“How?” was all he said. This was the part where he was supposed to call Brock to drag her away for lying during entrance interviews and examinations and for hiding her power, but much to Eliza’s relief he didn’t reach for his communicator. He kept his eyes locked on her.
“I don’t know how. I just do it,” she shrugged. He could use his lie detector on her if he didn’t believe her. She honestly did not know how she did it. She tried to figure it out since she realized she had a power when she started fighting in New York, years later and she still had no idea.
“Who knows about this?” he asked.
She could feel another sob forming in her throat. She could only handle confessing one secret at a time, did Steve really have to learn two in one night?
“Look at me Eliza,” he held her face between his hands, “I need you to be completely honest with me right now. You are the smartest initiate in your class; you were wise to keep your power a secret.”
Hearing confirmation that she had a power shook Eliza. She knew she had something special, she knew from history lessons that superpowers are dangerous and that she shouldn’t flaunt hers around, but to hear Captain America acknowledge that she had a power almost brought her to her knees in humility.
Steve didn’t have time to deal with an emotional and humbled superhuman. He gripped Eliza by the shoulders, “The commencement ceremony is a week away. You are one week away from the most important day of your life, do you understand?”
She stared at him blankly. No, she did not understand. Sure, commencement was important because she would graduate and learn her assignment, but she was confident she would travel with the other Rats in her class on mission to bring in all the other powered humans who refused to sign the Superhuman Registration Act. But Steve was implying something more important.
“Next Saturday is about more than getting your assignment,” he knew what she was thinking, “you are a Rat. You go before the Council next Saturday.” He stared into her eyes searching for some sign that she understood, but he was only freaking her out.
“Damn it Eliza! If they know you have a superpower the will make you register! Worse, they will imprison you for lying and not registering! You will be the first superhuman arrested, they’ll put you on the front page of every newspaper in the world to make an example of you!” Steve shook her until she could feel the fear he had for her in his fingerprints. Now she understood.
“Oh my god… oh my god what do I do?” she knew she would face heavy consequences when Shield found out she was hiding her ability, especially since her job within the agency was to arrest everyone else who refused to comply with the SRA. But she didn’t have a plan for what she would do when they did find out.
“We’re not supposed to tell you about the Council meeting,” he said. Her thoughts were easy to read, “They don’t want you to be prepared so that when they call you in they can figure out if you’re hiding something. But we can talk about that later.”
Eliza felt some relief. At least he wasn’t freaking out over the Council meeting like she was.
“Who knows?” he spoke gently. He hated to see her in a panic, but there was no other way to make her realize how much danger she was in.
“Xander,” she whispered.
Steve squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Xander wasn’t the worst person in the universe to trust with her secret, but he wasn’t the most ideal candidate, either.
“Anyone else?” he took her hands and she immediately felt better.
She shook her head. Other people may have had their suspicions, but they didn’t know what she was capable of. And as evidenced by Steve’s assumption that she could manipulate x-rays, their suspicions were way off base.
“You cannot let anyone find out,” Steve warned. “Do you trust Xander?”
More tears formed behind Eliza’s eyes and she let them all come out. This confession would hurt more than the first.
“What did he do to you Eliza?” Steve held her face and tenderly wiped away her tears. She leaned her cheek against his palm and struggled to find any words. Steve knew what Xander had done to Eliza, but he needed to hear her say it.
Eliza wanted to tell Steve. She knew that she had to tell him. If she was going to leave the training facility as a free woman after the commencement ceremony, she would have to trust Captain America with her life. But after months of lying to him, and after years of lying to everyone else, the truth refused to come out of her.
“Come with me,” Steve said and twisted his fingers through hers, “I’m gonna get you out of here for the night.” She picked up her gym bag and followed him to the exit.
She was still crying, but she wasn’t terrified anymore. She had never felt this many emotions at one time – fear, sadness, anger, and desperation for what would happen when she stood in front of the Council, but also hope and anticipation for whatever Steve had in mind for the night.
His motorcycle waited for them outside.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he winked. She climbed onto the seat behind him. “Hold on tight!” he said over sound of the revving engine. Her fingers scrambled for handles on the side, but there was nothing to grab onto. Steve reached behind him and took hold of her hands, then wrapped them around his torso. “You have to hold onto me,” he said. Eliza couldn’t see his expression in the dark, but she could sense his warm smile.
She held onto him tight as he brought the bike to life and started up the hill. She held onto him like her life depended on it. Her life did depend on him.
